the baptism interesting?--"

The girl, still laboring under her emotion, told everything,
described the faces, the attitudes, and even the appearance of the
Church. She added:--"It does one so much good to pray sometimes!--"

However, until lunch time the ladies confined themselves to being
nice to her with a view to make her feel more confident and amenable
to their advances.

As soon as they sat down to luncheon, the preliminary attack was
initiated. It was at first a vague discussion about self-sacrifice.
They quoted instances from ancient History, such as Judith and
Holophern, then, without any reason Lucretia with Sextus, Cleopatra
who admitted to her intimacy all the enemy generals and reduced
them to slavish servility. Then a fancy History was propounded,
originating in the imagination of those ignorant millionaires, and
according to which Roman matrons used to go to Capua and lull Hannibal
in their arms, and with him, his lieutenants and the phalanxes
of his mercenaries. They quoted all the women who had stopped
conquerors, converted their bodies into battlefields, a means of
conquest, a weapon, who by their heroic caresses had vanquished
frightful and execrated beings, and had sacrificed their chastity
to vengeance and patriotic devotion.

They even spoke, in veiled terms, of that English lady of noble
family, who had allowed herself to be inoculated with a horrid and
contagious disease, which she wanted to communicate to Bonaparte,
and how the latter had been miraculously saved by a sudden faintness
during the fatal appointment.